


The Day It Rained Forever

by keelywolfe



Category: Smallville
Genre: Angst, Drama, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-06-19
Updated: 2002-06-19
Packaged: 2017-11-01 08:55:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/354650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keelywolfe/pseuds/keelywolfe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set two years into the future, at a funeral where even the weather has a say in things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Day It Rained Forever

**Author's Note:**

> An answer to the Bradbury title challenge. Just to play

## The Day It Rained Forever

by Keelywolfe

<http://www.ravenswing.com/~keelywolfe/>

* * *

Disclaimer: Clark and Lex are beautiful, sexy guys who suffer so very prettily, and they belong to someone with a much larger bank account than mine. This story won't be increasing my bank account either. 

Author's it safe, and since it won't ruin the story, I'm going to mention that this is sort of a character death story, since the funeral they are at is Chloe's. Can't help myself, since I have a sincere fear that Chloe is going to have all the luck of a Star Trek Captain's girlfriend while she dates Clark. Ah, well. 

__

~~ 

Something about funerals seemed to attract rain, an electric pulse of some sort between people gathered in the celebration of death that made the sky weep cold tears upon them in sympathetic mourning. 

Umbrellas like scattered shadows over the cemetery, and Clark was standing mostly beneath one with his mother, his right shoulder still exposed and the rain was seeping through the thick material of his suit coat, chilling skin and soul that were already cold from listening to others weep. Clark didn't cry. The yawning emptiness inside him was too large for a tiny stream of saltwater to fill and it seemed pathetic to even try. Listening to his mother's tears was more than enough, deliberate sounds muffled into a frail tissue and it was grating at him, itching at his fingers to cover her mouth to stop it, to cover his ears so he couldn't hear it, but the lamenting cry of rain couldn't stop it, so how could he? 

Instead, he allowed himself not to hear the words burbling around him, wet with rain and grief, people migrating into clumps to solemnly agree it was too early, such a waste of life, all the proper words in all the proper places, and Clark had stop listening a long time ago. He was looking instead, at the other side of the cemetery, at the one person who was standing alone like he was comfortable with it. Wearing a pair of sunglasses that were too simple to be anything but expensive, should have been ridiculous in the rain but titles like 'ridiculous' and 'silly' and 'foolish' had never clung to Lex Luthor, not when there were many more costly and crueler titles waiting for their turns. 

Watching Lex was easier than listening, and Clark stood where he was, not listening to the people or his mother, concerned words touching him less than the rain. Watched Lex speaking to Chloe's dad and shaking his hand, and Clark saw he was still wearing his gloves. Lex was much too meticulous for it to be anything but deliberate, which meant Lex no longer cared what the residents of Smallville thought of him. 

It should hurt worse than it did, to know that, but after two years of listening to his father's barely disguised 'I told you so's, this was nothing, hardly more than a pinch. 

Lex didn't talk to anyone else. Walked to the grave and silently dropped a white rose on the casket, petals wet and bruised from the rain, before walking back up the hill and away. 

He never looked at Clark. 

__

He'd almost managed to convince himself that Lex wouldn't even be there. Probably just dropped in to give a little good PR for LuthorCorp and then he'd head back to Metropolis as fast as his tires could take him. He'd certainly shown no interest in leaving the city once he'd gotten back there before. 

Lex wouldn't be there but Clark couldn't stop wanting to check. Would only take a minute, really, his parents would never even know he'd gone, or even if they did he'd be spared one round of the Looks, the ones that made a little worry-crease appear between their eyes. They had long since run out of things to say, and Clark had ceased wanting to hear it long before that. Better to leave, then, before they thought of something else with the infuriating persistence of parents who refused to simply let things be. 

Out the window, better not to take the door, and Clark let go, running as fast as he could, pushing hard and he was hardly even damp when he slipped through the gate, stopping in the drive and the rain soaked through his thin dress shirt instantly, taking greedy advantage of the pause as he stared. 

He was wrong. Lex was very much in residence at the Castle Luthor, unless the cleaning staff drove a very nice BMW and somehow he doubted they were paid quite that well even if they were employed by the Luthors. 

Knocked slowly, dreamily, and Clark couldn't really remember knocking on this door before. He'd always walked in, or gone around back, or the butler had opened the door for him before he'd made it to the first step. This time Lex opened the door, eyes startlingly dark in the surrounding paleness of his face, the white of his shirt. No sunglasses to hide his eyes but somehow they seemed just as shuttered without them. 

They stood in silence until Lex finally opened the door a fraction more, turning without a sound to allow Clark inside and Clark shut the door quietly behind him. 

Lex was in his bare feet, walking through the hallway, the dustsheet covered furniture a rush of unwelcome dj vu like the first time he'd been here and he followed Lex into what used to be his study, and no shiny cobalt bottles anymore, but one of finely cut crystal, filled with glittering topaz. Lex filled two small glasses with it in a swirl of dark color and Clark took the offered drink, swallowing without tasting, the alcohol sharp in his throat. 

Lex drained his own glass, not bothering to taste it either, and he refilled it just as quickly, sipping the second one slower. He leaned against the desk, the barest hint of a smirk in his voice when he spoke. "I do believe you've grown a little, Clark." 

So have you, Clark wanted to say, but not in the same way. Stared at Lex's bare feet instead, perfectly manicured and someone had been on their knees in front of Lex not too long ago, touching and Lex had just let them, had read the paper maybe, or maybe just watched them, because he could. 

Clark knew from experience that Lex's feet were as soft as a baby's, like the rest of him and Lex seemed as impervious to calluses as Clark himself was. Only Lex had learned to be impervious to other things too and Clark hadn't managed that as well, bruises of the skin nothing compared to the brilliant colors of pain that could be created inside, nauseating paintings in the stomach, tattoos inside the chest, carved into the ribcage. 

"We were involved," Clark said, not meaning to say anything but intentions and actions weren't always the same. 

Lex nodded. "Of course you were. If you can't get the girl of your dreams then it doesn't hurt to settle for the next best thing." 

Redness was throbbing dully behind Clark's eyelids; he didn't recall closing them. "Stop it." 

"If you don't want to hear it, then leave." Brusquely, dismissal words, and Lex had apparently gotten used to ordering people around without apology. 

"Like you did?" Again, things he'd never meant to say, gathering storm clouds in his head were sending up warning flashes of lightning, calling for the sensible, the weaker beings called human to take cover. 

Luthors were not often called 'sensible' or 'weak', but they had, on occasion, been called things other than human. 

His lashes lowered, blinking slowly, but Lex didn't look away, didn't do anything but take another sip from his glass. "I had to leave, Clark. Smallville is a dangerous place for people like me." He did move away then, dropping his glass carelessly on the other side of the desk and it rolled off, fracturing against the hard slate of the floor. Neither of them looked at it. Lex stood in front of the window, panes of stained glass that were newer than the rest of the castle, replacing the shattered ones from a different storm years before. Rain battered against it, barely seen rivulets trickling downward. 

"We're different from everyone else here," Lex said, softly, arms clasped behind his back. "They don't see because they don't want to see. We see because we can't force ourselves to look away." He slanted a look at Clark, eyes still so very dark and filled with grim amusement. "I never could resist a challenge." 

"If that's true then why did you run away from Smallville?" 

"I didn't run away from Smallville, Clark, I ran away from you." Sharply said, stinging power behind the words and Lex had a storm of his own, inwardly brewing and waiting for the threshold, waiting. 

Clark tilted his head a little, listening to the rain, to Lex's breathing. "That's refreshingly honest, Lex." 

Lex turned around, something closer to laughter than anger in his eyes. "I was always honest with you. Can you say the same?" 

This time Clark turned away, and it was time to leave, the difference between honesty and self-preservation and willful blindness aching within, widening the void inside him but Lex caught his arm, forcing him to look with his own will, as he never could with only his hands. "I couldn't look away but I knew enough to realize what might happen," Lex said, fiercely, for a shining moment becoming the Friend-Lex he'd been for all too short a time. "I knew what I could do to you." 

"You never did anything to me, Lex." 

A soft laugh, edged with something brutally sharp. "Oh, but I wanted to. It would have started as something noble, I'm sure. A way to help, maybe. I might have even believed it myself for a time, but by the end I wouldn't have been able to stop, until I'd had you spread on a stainless steel table with pins holding your flesh open and your various and sundry organs lined up in neat little jars." 

"Stop it," Clark croaked, stiff and cold, colder under Lex's touch and it was all there in Lex's voice, in a way that not even the words could have expressed. The greed, lust for knowledge, just lust. 

He leaned it, lips just brushing Clark's ear as he whispered, "I am not a nice person, Clark, and all the earnest naivet in the world working against that won't change it, so yours doesn't stand much of a chance." 

"I'm not nave." 

"No? I just told you I want to see you dissected on a table and you're still here. I know you too well to call you stupid." 

Not stupid, he wanted to say. Not nave or stupid just cold, terribly cold but where words failed him his hands didn't, reaching out and finding something warm, something that startled cold for only a moment before warming, and Clark melted into it, like butter, like first snow, and the whiteness of a sheet was beneath them, the sofa beneath it not quite big enough, but Lex's shirt had tattered away at his first touch, white skin again white cloth, the heat of it too much temptation for one starving for it, and Clark fitted himself against Lex, making it work. 

Sweet taste of skin, so terribly, frighteningly white and Clark slipped lower, sucking a blush of color into it, blazing a trail downward, and Lex's pants were no more barrier than his shirt, ripped away like tissue, and Clark found something else that was warm, wrapped a hand around Lex's cock and lapped at the tip, sipping from this glass, the taste saltier than the whiskey but the burn, the heady -heat- of it was the same. 

No words, Clark had had more than enough of words in the last week, and the broken little sounds Lex made were better, tiny cries that meant he wanted it and Clark knew if he pushed it they would gain an edge of desperation, and that he could break every bone in Lex's body before Lex would ever say please. 

Twisting upward, Clark carried Lex's legs with him, sliding them over his shoulders and Lex folded up easily, so utterly flexible, so easy to make him into whatever Clark wanted and yet somehow he always had the feeling that the only reason he was able to do it was because that's what Lex had wanted all along. Manipulation through compliance. 

His own pants were quickly unfastened, shirt buttons skittering to the floor, escaping under white-covered chairs and Clark cupped Lex's hips in both hands, stroked smooth skin with the tips of his fingers, the only amount of soothing he could spare, and pushed inside, almost forcing and Lex hissed, and yes, he could feel at least one form of pain, apparently. Too dry, too tense but slowly, agonizingly Lex's body yielded to his persistence, tight muscle relaxing around him almost abruptly and Clark slid in to the hilt. 

Tight, so perfectly tight, like he hadn't done this for a while and Clark could pretend that, pretend that he didn't know better, that he hadn't opened the paper to see someone else at Lex's elbow, a veritable harem of women and men, and even if they weren't touching in the picture, Clark knew better, knew Lex at least that much. 

Bracing himself on his arms, Clark began to move, a slow arching of his hips and Lex moaned. Lips parted, bitten red and swollen, and Clark leaned forward to touch them with his own, feeling Lex's next moan vibrate into his mouth. He sucked in a breath, the air murky with their humidity, sweat and sex, and oh, so -hot- and Clark caught one of Lex's wrists in his hand, felt it slip slickly in his grip and he only had just enough control left not to break it, holding Lex down, holding him still when Lex tried to squirm and arch under him, and Clark just took, lay between the sprawl of Lex's legs and fucked him, other words had always been too gentle for them. 

Too hard, always, too brutal, just a bit too much, like everything else between them. Lex's hands moving, nails digging viciously and he struggled, hissing and keening, -demanding-, giving orders, even now, for faster, for harder and the storm clouds crashed between them, electrifying them and someone was screaming, intensity that felt like death, almost enough for tears in the sticky aftermath of wetness and remembering how to breath. 

Storms were always violent in Smallville 

__

And in the end, crammed together on a musty smelling sofa, wrapped in the dustsheet. Lex resting against him, the silence not quite comfortable, and Clark didn't really want to speak, but did it just the same. 

"You're leaving again, aren't you," Clark said, not bothering to make it a question. 

"Of course," Lex replied, easily, stretching and making Clark take a sharp breath at the feel of smooth warm skin sliding against his own. "Nothing has really changed, has it?" 

"Not really," Clark agreed, burying his face into the sex-scented curve of Lex's neck, pushing him back against the cushions and taking him again. 

Much, much later, windows tinted with darkness when Clark finally began pulling on his clothes, dressing slowly. Not so tired of words that he could simply leave without them. "I'll see you around, then." Dubiously, not really sure of the answer and Clark found a part of himself hurting at that. Not dead inside, then. Not yet. 

Lex was still wrapped in the dustsheet, casual and calm, even with a blur of lust-induced bruising painting his skin, everywhere, beautiful art that Clark could hardly stand knowing others had seen. "I'm sure you will," Lex said, lazily. He would be gone in an hour, back to the safety of Metropolis. Not willful blindness, but something willful just the same. 

The rain was still covering the earth in sorrow, and Clark ran against it, only stained by a few droplets by the time he was home. 

-finis- 


End file.
